Deep learning[1] opens a new level of capabilities within the artificial intelligence realm, but its use has been limited to data scientists. Nowadays, finally, it may be ripe for "democratization," meaning it is poised to become an accessible set of technologies available to all who need it -- with numerous business applications.
Deep learning, which attempts to mimic the logic of the human brain for analyzing patterns, is starting to see widespread adoption within enterprise AI initiatives. A majority of companies with AI implementations, 53%, plans to incorporate deep learning into their workplaces within the next 24 months, a recent survey[2] of 154 IT and business professionals conducted and published by ITPro Today, InformationWeek and Interop finds.
Deep learning is now driving rapid innovations in AI and influencing massive disruptions across all markets, a new report[3] published by Databricks asserts. "Deep learning models can be trained to perform complicated tasks such as image or speech recognition and determine meaning from these inputs," the paper's authors state. "A key advantage is that these models scale well with data and their performance will improve as the size of your data increases."
The Databricks report[4] defines deep learning as "a specialized and advanced form of machine learning that performs what is considered end-to-end learning. A deep learning algorithm is given massive volumes of data, typically unstructured and disparate, and a task to perform such as classification. The resulting model is then capable of solving complex tasks such as recognizing objects within an image and translating speech in real time."
The following are applications that are enabled through deep learning:
- Image classification: "The process of identifying and detecting an object or a feature in a digital image or video," the report states.